Memories of a Bear Hunter 



hour, he appeared to have knowledge of it, and did 

 not come until after I had gone to bed. Thinking 

 that his den might be in a nearby thicket, Milligan 

 and I followed him there, but he kept out of sight. 

 We found only the bones of the elk, which he had 

 picked clean. His depredations were at last 

 stopped by hanging the remaining pieces of elk 

 meat on a cottonwood sapling, thought to be too 

 small for him to climb. The next morning we had 

 evidence that he had tried to climb it, and after 

 finding that he could not do so, he began to gnaw 

 at the sapling at about the height of his head when 

 standing. This was the only bear of whose pres- 

 ence we learned. 



About December i, the weather changed and 

 became stormy, but it was not until the 1 6th that the 

 storms began in earnest. Then it snowed almost 

 continuously, and the temperature dropped almost 

 to zero, and possibly still lower, for my ther- 

 mometer did not register below that mark. By 

 December 21, the snow was sixteen to eighteen 

 inches deep at camp. Not relishing the idea of 

 being snowed in, we packed up and started down 

 the Boulder River to the Yellowstone, instead of 

 attempting to cross over on the snow drifts directly 

 to Benson's Landing. 



So much snow was encountered that day that we 



